Do you need some ideas for a paper topic? These databases offer lists of controversial topics that might interest you.
The website ProCon can also be helpful for selecting a topic.
Background information is a good place to start your research. You will find basic facts, history, descriptions and concepts about your topic, names of important people related to your topic, and vocabulary that can help you create successful search strategies.
Suggested databases for gathering background information:
Gale eBook editions of multiple reference titles, including Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Encyclopaedia Judaica, and International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.
Each issue examines a single "hot" topic with comments from experts, lawmakers and citizens on all sides of every issue. Includes charts, graphs and sidebar articles -- plus a pro-con feature, a chronology, lengthy bibliographies and a list of contacts.
Covers every major facet of measurement and statistics in an accessible way. Topics include mean, mode, and median to reliability, validity, significance, correlation, and much more, often with cross-disciplinary coverage.
Containing resources that present multiple sides of an issue, Points of View Reference Source provides rich content that can help students assess and develop persuasive arguments and essays, better understand controversial issues and develop analytical thinking skills.
Provides a comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with around 10,000 full-text periodicals - of which more than 9,000 are peer-reviewed journals.
Database of contemporary social issues with content structured to promote critical-thinking skills. It contains reference book titles, pro and con viewpoint articles, and a variety of periodicals, podcasts, reviewed Web links, images, statistical tables, charts, and graphs.
Full text multi-disciplinary database of journal articles, books, images, and primary sources. Some subject areas include art, business, economics, history, humanities, language and literature, law, medicine, allied health, science, and social sciences.
The subscription includes the following JSTOR collections: Arts & Sciences I-XV, 19th Century British Pamphlets, Business IV, Global Plants, Hebrew Journals, Ireland, Life Sciences Collection, Lives of Literature, Security Studies, Struggles for Freedom - South Africa, Sustainability, and World Heritage Sites - Africa.
Social Problems presents scholarly articles offering critical perspectives on contemporary social issues as well as influential sociological findings and theories that have the ability to help us better understand and deal with our complex social environment.
NewsBank provides a comprehensive collection of reliable news sources covering a wide array of topics and issues.
Publications covering news in the Chicago region.
Provides full text for over 1,000 national and international newspapers - including Star Tribune, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Times (U.K.), Toronto Star, Bangkok Post, The Jordan Times, and many more - in a searchable archive.
Provides searchable full-text daily Chicago Sun-Times articles from 1985 to the present.
Includes full-text and full-images of the Chicago Tribune in a searchable archive. The archive covers 1849-1999. This link is best used for searching primary source content and historic news articles.
Provides searchable full-text daily Chicago Tribune articles from 1849 to the present.
Provides full-text daily and searchable archived newspapers in Illinois covering North West Cook County, DuPage, Lake, McHenry and Kane Counties and Fox Valley from January 1995 to the present.
Newspapers published at universities and colleges in Illinois.